Gregory Benton sighting

June 29, 2006

•Â My friend, cartoonist Gregory Benton, lives in New York and recently participated in a fabulous gallery show (curated by cartoonist Jason Little) in the city called OPOLIS, at the Flux Factory, that essentially creates a miniature 3-D city, and also incorporates comics. This is a hugely ambitious show that i wish to god i could see in person.

•Â The site description reads:
OPOLIS presents Comix-Fluxture-as-city. Opolis is an imaginary city, located in the Flux Factory main space. Individual city blocks have been assigned to individual cartoonists and illustrators. These cartoonists have designed the buildings and environments that will fill the city blocks (an apartment building, a looming office skyscraper, a library, a public park…) with invented characters that are the citizens of Opolis.

OPOLIS is the third manifestation of Flux Factory’s annual “Comix Fluxture” exhibit. These exhibits have brought cartoonists and illustrators into the gallery to create comics narratives that also function as installation art. The ongoing objective of the series is to create works of art to be read intimately…as a comic strip…but also contribute to an overall installation spectacle.

• If you live in New York, get your ass on over there!

Following is an email and photos i received from Gregory, reprinted with his permission. The comic strip that Gregory himself created for his "building" (which you can see in these photos), we'll also reprint in its entirety in the next update of our comix section on this site.

• If Gregory's name sounds familiar, then you may have read some of his comics goodness here on our own comix section. or it's because of a wonderful comic he did for Slave Labor a long long time ago called Hummingbird. It's lusciously drawn and a real wild read. Since then, he's been doing more painting than anything else, though he has been doing some funky-cool historical comic strips that none of us will get to see. Some lucky students will though. His comics work these days is full-color bliss. Here's hoping that one day we'll all be blessed to see more.

•Â Meanwhile, i'm leaving for a long weekend down at my awesome mom-in-law's fabulous lake-house, down by the Oregon Sand Dunes on the coast.

• Gregory Benton writes:
Finished up the building & comix I had been working on. The opening was excellent. Good crowd, great reception. I was interviewed briefly by the NY Press, if anything comes of that, I'll forward it to you. Info on the show can be found at www.fluxfactory.org.

The building dimensions are 6' wide x 4'deep & 7.5' high. Medium: Styrofoam, acrylic enamel & Digography. As far as content, comix run on the two long sides (front & back) with paintings & sketches along the sides.